Robert G. Neumann, Former U.s. Ambassador, Professor

June 25, 1999|Los Angeles Times

Robert G. Neumann, expert on international affairs at the University of California at Los Angeles, professor and U.S. ambassador who ended his diplomatic career after wrangling with then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig in 1981, has died. He was 83.

Mr. Neumann died June 18 of cancer at his home in Bethesda, Md., said his son, Ronald E. Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and deputy assistant secretary of state.

Robert Neumann, a highly respected Austrian-born scholar, left UCLA in 1966 to serve as ambassador to Afghanistan, a post he held until he became ambassador to Morocco in 1973. He also held State Department posts in Washington and served briefly as ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

But on July 20, 1981, Mr. Neumann -- Saudi ambassador for just two months -- reportedly criticized Haig at a meeting with Sen. Charles Percy, D-Ill., then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Haig got President Reagan's permission to fire Mr. Neumann for what he viewed as insubordination. Within days, Mr. Neumann announced his resignation and returned to Washington, D.C., as senior staff associate and later vice chairman of the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Born in Vienna, Mr. Neumann studied diplomacy at the University of Vienna and in Rennes, France, then spent a summer at the Geneva School of International Studies in 1937 on the promise of a full scholarship for the following academic year. Instead, he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

While in Geneva, Mr. Neumann met Marlen Eldredge, whom he later married. She died two years ago.

After his release from the Nazi camp, Mr. Neumann traveled to the United States to join his American fiance.

He earned his master's degree at Amherst College and then taught at Oshkosh State Teachers College in Wisconsin until he obtained permission to join the U.S. Army.